Headful of Ghosts
by Asking foR lifE
Summary: It's always been harder to stutter out a feeble "I like you" when you have half a million voices egging you on. Kouichi/Raimei with a few strange quirks thrown in.


This doesn't entirely make sense. It was also written _long_ before chapter 61 came out, so there are minor inconsistencies and a whole lot of weird. Please forgive me, fandom.

Stand disclaimers apply.

* * *

Kouichi had a headful of ghosts. Not a head full, mind you, but a headful. It was sort of like having a handful, but instead of keeping them behind his fingers, he had to hold them behind his eyes and listen to them whispering things he couldn't quite sort out. That was what happened when you lived for so long, he guessed. The voices he heard throughout his life just... stayed with him. They always stayed with him, even a hundred years after their owners were gone from the world, and then, when he was the only person they had left, they put a voice to his thoughts and talked to him.

They never asked about anything useful. They didn't care about the important things the way Kouichi did. Nabari, the Kairoshuu, the Hijutsu—none of those things mattered to his idle voices. If it pertained to him, they didn't want to hear it. Instead, they wanted to know things that had long since ceased to be about them, like how long until the sun went down, when the next car would drive past, or how many steps it would take to reach the doorway. The same way a child felt the need to count a ladybug's spots, Kouichi's voices had to look for the shapes in the clouds. Usually, he could laugh a little at all the useless necessities they just had to know, but then they would bring up Raimei's name and his smile would go stale.

The ghosts liked Raimei. It wasn't that he didn't want them to, because those ghosts were his thoughts and he wanted to like Raimei with all his heart, but even when he said "enough", his ghosts would say "not enough" and Raimei was the perfect example. Her smile, just that subtle upturning of her lips, made his heart swell and made the voices yearn. Voices of gentle elderly women and six year old children. That was where Kouichi normally told himself to stop right thinking and the thought would die in a jagged sliver that notched his composure, where all his wayward thoughts collected like dust in wood grain.

Then, one day, the ghosts won out.

* * *

They're sitting out on the tennis court during lunch hour when it happens. The summer-sweltering heat ensconces them like a blanket, clogging their pores with sweat and pulling their clothes in wet ridges over their adolescent hips. It is so hot even the crickets have stopped humming.

Raimei crosses her legs unabashedly next to him and chews through her sandwich, licking blackberry jam from her fingers, staring off in between Miharu and Thobari sitting on the stairs up the hill. Her hair sticks to the side of her face in matted rows. She's completely unattractive at this moment in time. Kouichi jiggles the straw in his juice box with his middle and forefinger without actually drinking anything, pursing his lips because his pulse is pumping gallons of adrenaline through him. Completely unattractive, and yet—

"Raimei-san, can I kiss you?"

_The words still come out._

"Kouichi, I've told you already, you're not my type," she mumbles, staring hard at that empty space. She has amazing reaction time.

"Oh, I suppose that's true," he reflects as he laughs in his self-deprecatory way. To cover up the way his hands are shaking, he picks at a scab near the nape of his neck.

And for whatever reason, this is how she seems to realize his question is genuine. "Kouichi," she says again, ripe with disbelief. He flushes deep in his cheeks, tamping down the voices that go 'Oh, listen to her voice, Kouichi, she sounds so surprised, Kouichi—doesn't she sound surprised, Kouichi? Doesn't she like you, Kouichi?' and shake their heads in that pitying way. A shrug hardly seems like the appropriate response but that's what he ends up doing.

"I'm sorry, Raimei-san, I just felt like I had to ask."

She pushes him off, sharp, abrasive. "I can't believe you," Raimei mutters, ever the honourable samurai. The jam sticking to her cheeks makes her acidic tongue just a little bit sweeter.

"Raimei-san," Kouichi says with nervous humour, "I didn't mean to offend you."

He never means to offend her. Somehow, though, that is always what he ends up doing.

The samurai is on her feet in an instant, not really in anger, although she _does _knock over his juice box as she stands. Kouichi shrinks back and raises one slim hand in a gesture of defense and peace (it's Nabari; peace never lasts). Now, he's thinking, _enough. I've said more than enough. and even his various voices agree. _ "Maybe I should back off for a while—"

But before he takes one more step away, Raimei's whole face is crumpling like a castle of cards, collapsing in from the top down. She stops him with three words: "Hey, Kouichi, wait."

It's so, _so_ like her, Kouichi thinks, but in truth, he's really thankful for it. He does wait and then melts into her body when she—_and _he _and _they—grasps his arms and pulls him near. She doesn't know it, but Raimei's jumping feet first into a swamp of regrets that don't belong to either of them. It either makes her unbelievably brave or a little delusional. Her arms sling around his shoulders. His body collides soundlessly against her. Her movements are strong and worn.

"Kouichi, I'm your friend, right?" Raimei confesses against his shoulder.

He's all ready to hug her and quickly pull away until she asks him that. "Yes?" he tries, infinitely uncomfortable, but when she holds him like this, he has a lot more patience for these odd, fleeting moments. It means their mutual peace is a little less temporary.

"So, promise me you'll keep asking me that."

It could have gone over his head if her voice hadn't broken halfway through. He feels her sharp wrists tighten on either side of his neck—tighten in the bone. Miharu is looking their way. Kouichi's lips purse entirely on their own. It had been _so close_ to going over his head.

"I'll do my best," he says vaguely.

In the motionless, sepia-drab seconds of dry silence that follow, he swears he can feel Raimei press a dry kiss to his shoulder where his shirt collar still covers the skin; hear the voices singing themselves to sleep.


End file.
